Participative Democracy and Representation

Democracy is a good thing. One of the good things about it is it’s inherent adaptability to changing circumstances. The system is so constructed that change to the operation of the system can happen, well, democratically.

The system under which our society has grown is a representative democracy, one in which decisions are made by elected representatives of the people. There are simply too many people for everyone’s views to be heard on every subject, so we vote for someone who represents our views and this smaller number of representatives make decisions on our behalf.

This system requires a couple of things to be true:

  • Representatives must be accountable to and trusted by those they represent.
  • The electorate must have continual dialogue with their representative to ensure that there views are accurately represented.

This worked fine in Ancient Greece - the populace and the state were smaller - and it has developed over the last 800 years in this country as the “worst way to run a country, except for all the others” (Churchill).

There is currently a massive disaffection with this political process because the two points above are no longer true, if they ever were. They are certainly no longer perceived to be true.

This is clearly recognised by our representatives as evidenced by their continual attempts to create the perception that they are accountable, can be trusted and wish to engage in dialogue with the electorate and will act on that dialogue.

The rise and rise of single issue campaigns indicates that it is the process not society that people have lost interest in. People are as passionately committed to making a better world to live in as they ever have been, they simply don’t see the established process as an effective means of doing it. They are also fired by things which actually matter directly to them, rather than more esoteric issues which, while they are extremely important are not perceived to have direct meaning.

For example, no-one will be mounting any protest rallies about the wording of an EU constitution in the near future, but hundreds will gather to oppose a landfill site in their backyards.

Even more interesting is the fact that hundreds of thousands will protest against environmental exploitation for commercial gain. This is not an issue which affects them individually in the short term, but affects the entire society in the longer term.

People care.

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